Can libraries cause CTDs?

[John Fields 280]

Hi,

Yesterday I tried repeatedly to fly around Liverpool, but I had CTDs every flight, no matter what scenery mods (aircraft, scenery, airports...) I had installed in the Community folder. So I uninstalled everything, except libraries that some airports need, because I thought they were irrellevant if there were no scenery or airports selected (I use MSFS Addon Linker).

As the CTDs continue anyway, I decided to turn off every library. And voilà! No more CTDs!

Then, I installed some addons (both commercial and freeware) and since then I had not even a single CTD in every flight!

I wanted to post this new topic yesterday to bring to your attention, but avsim.com was down.

What do you think of that?

Thank you. 

Edited August 9, 2021 by John Fields

[AnkH 2,282]

Good question, as I had exactly the same thought: as long as the library is not used by any addon, it should not lead to CTD, no? But who knows, so far I am happy that none of my 25 libraries seem to provoke any CTD. But then, I did not really test this thoroughly, just some short hops here and there. 

In any case it would probably make sense to have only those addons active (for time being) that already have the SU5 compatibility tag over at flightsim.to and regularly check for updates over there...

[John Fields 280]

19 minutes ago, AnkH said:

Good question, as I had exactly the same thought: as long as the library is not used by any addon, it should not lead to CTD, no? But who knows, so far I am happy that none of my 25 libraries seem to provoke any CTD. But then, I did not really test this thoroughly, just some short hops here and there. 

In any case it would probably make sense to have only those addons active (for time being) that already have the SU5 compatibility tag over at flightsim.to and regularly check for updates over there...

Yes, i wonder if it is possible to have libraries active with no addon related that caused CTD.

Anyway, this morning I flew with no libraries active and no CTDs!

But, if you have to renew every scenery, airport and library each time you have an update... then..Oh, my God! I have thousands of addons!

Cheers. 

[pstrub 998]

I'm curious: What kind of libraries are you talking about? Scenery libraries, texture libraries, things like FSUIPC? Were they placed in the Community folder (well, I mean, using the Addon Linker)? 

I just use a rather basic set of add-ons, so I never came across the need to install a library for anything.

Edited August 9, 2021 by pstrub

[mamu82 278]

Libraries are a collection of objects, compiled as whatevername-modellibs.bgl

*Every* bgl in you community or official folder Is read by msfs at loading time. Therefore, a bad bgl could crash your system. This Is also the main reason everyone advice to "empy" the community folder, It Is only to avoid crash at startup, It has nothing to do with update.

The guys at Asobo are working hard to keep backwards compatibility, but this behaviour leads to performance problems.

Everytime they dump some Legacy code an old addon would fail

The addons causing problems are i would Say 90% using Legacy code or old tecniques, most of them are a port from previous sims.

 

Hope this helps/clarify the issue

 

 

[pstrub 998]

23 minutes ago, mamu82 said:

Libraries are a collection of objects, compiled as whatevername-modellibs.bgl

 

Thanks, now it makes sense! Of course I heard about bgl files, but I didn't know they are used as libraries outside specific scenery add-ons. When I read "library", I usually think .dll or .so (roughly the Linux equivalent of dll) 😉

And of course MSFS has to touch them in some way (at least to know what's inside) when loading, so it's no surprise that they can cause crashes under certain circumstances. Although I'd assume the best practice wouldn't be to crash, but to ignore the file, write a message to the console, and continue loading, if there's any type of corruption inside a bgl file. But I get it, it's pretty hard to catch all possible errors when loading data files that don't conform with the specification.

Edited August 9, 2021 by pstrub

[John Fields 280]

1 hour ago, pstrub said:

I'm curious: What kind of libraries are you talking about? Scenery libraries, texture libraries, things like FSUIPC? Were they placed in the Community folder (well, I mean, using the Addon Linker)? 

I just use a rather basic set of add-ons, so I never came across the need to install a library for anything.

Hi,

If you use a limited set of add-ons you possibly don't need libraries (or you need only very few of them).

I have a lot, a mean A LOT, of add-ons. No FSUIPC, but scenery like mesh, cities, landmarks and airports (big and small), almost every freeware. A big part of the freeware airports uses libraries. You selected the libraries and they serve several airports from the same author of the library in question or from another creator who also uses the same libraries. Once the airports and the libraries are installed, it is very difficult to know which libraries uses.

The fact of having to update the add-ons (not all of them, but many) every time there is an update is a headache for me because I'm never sure which airport or scenery (or, also aircraft mod) collides with the update.

However, lately, I limited to the minimum the amount of add-ons installed before each flight (thanks to the MSFS Add-on Linker), but still I have had tons of CTDs (maybe more than 50%) since update 1.18.13.0 (not fixed with the hotfixes 1.18.14.0 and 1.18.15.0). 

I have to say that I didn't have that problem before the big update. The CTDs were very rare.

Then, yesterday, I removed all the libraries. Perhaps one (or some) of them are incompatible with the update and giving me the CTD.

Edited August 9, 2021 by John Fields

[John Fields 280]

1 hour ago, mamu82 said:

Libraries are a collection of objects, compiled as whatevername-modellibs.bgl

*Every* bgl in you community or official folder Is read by msfs at loading time. Therefore, a bad bgl could crash your system. This Is also the main reason everyone advice to "empy" the community folder, It Is only to avoid crash at startup, It has nothing to do with update.

The guys at Asobo are working hard to keep backwards compatibility, but this behaviour leads to performance problems.

Everytime they dump some Legacy code an old addon would fail

The addons causing problems are i would Say 90% using Legacy code or old tecniques, most of them are a port from previous sims.

 

Hope this helps/clarify the issue

 

 

Yes,

Very clarifying!

Thank you.

[pstrub 998]

5 minutes ago, John Fields said:

Hi,

If you use a limited set of add-ons you possibly don't need libraries (or you need only very few of them).

...

Then, yesterday, I removed all the libraries. Perhaps one (or some) of them are incompatible with the update and giving me the CTD.

Thanks for the explanations! Yes, in this context I think it's safe to assume that libraries can (in some cases) also cause CTDs. 

Edited August 9, 2021 by pstrub

[cianpars 1,185]

I've noticed some of my airport sceneries that use object libraries don't seem to be as well populated as they were before SU5.  It's as if they are no longer able to read the object libraries any more.  I have however renames all of the object libraries to begin with "aa" so that if I move my UK scenery out and put my France or Austria scenery in, I always have them separated in the community folder. I really am going to have to start using addon linker.

[Alvega 2,126]

3 hours ago, John Fields said:

Then, yesterday, I removed all the libraries. Perhaps one (or some) of them are incompatible with the update and giving me the CTD.

It would be good if you could add them again one by one and test for CTD to find the one causing the problem. If you do that please let us know which one it was.

[John Fields 280]

14 minutes ago, cianpars said:

I've noticed some of my airport sceneries that use object libraries don't seem to be as well populated as they were before SU5.  It's as if they are no longer able to read the object libraries any more.  I have however renames all of the object libraries to begin with "aa" so that if I move my UK scenery out and put my France or Austria scenery in, I always have them separated in the community folder. I really am going to have to start using addon linker.

Hi,

I've got my libraries in separate folders. But, now I have turn off all of them.

I'm not sure the factor that causes CTDs, because I'm having CTDs right now with two or three add-ons only and no libraries at all. I can't figure out what's the cause.

I think it's a random issue that only ASOBO could fix it.

In the meantime... I don't know what to do!

 

 

[John Fields 280]

2 minutes ago, Alvega said:

It would be good if you could add them again one by one and test for CTD to find the one causing the problem. If you do that please let us know which one it was.

Yes, Alvega.

But right now I don't have any library selected and I having continuos CTDs.

Please, ASOBO, fix it!

 

[Alvega 2,126]

28 minutes ago, John Fields said:

Yes, Alvega.

But right now I don't have any library selected and I having continuos CTDs.

Please, ASOBO, fix it!

 

Hmm, then perhaps it wasn't any library causing the CTDs before. 

Hope you can solve those CTDs.

[Romeo_Tango 143]

54 minutes ago, John Fields said:

Yes, Alvega.

But right now I don't have any library selected and I having continuos CTDs.

Please, ASOBO, fix it!

 

if your graphic card is overclocked, drop it back to default values.

This fixed my CTCs.